[Solo/Drabbles] Thaw (Maebe)

[Nio Love]

The Good

The moment they were inside her room, and the door was closed to the rest of the world, Maebe dropped the act and pulled her arms up to wrap around his thick neck the way one would try to wrap around a waist.

"Thaw," she sobbed out childishly, her face pressed against hard rock as she buried her face into him and cried. "I can't see, I still can't see. Thaw, I'm blind. Like really and truly. What am I going to do? How am I going to live like this. How am I going to even-"

The weapon hushed her with a low, gentle grumble. "Shhh. It's going to be all right, child. It will take time. I am here now, with you. All you have to do is focus on this moment." She was always so good at focusing on the moment, and ignoring the past or the future. She'd done it for so long, and he'd watched her do it. She closed her eyes, as useless as the act was, and tried to keep her mind in the present, where it belonged. There was still a chance she would see again. A chance. They'd done all they could, and she just had to wait-

But the future loomed ahead of her once more like a black, yawning mouth, constantly trying to gulp her down into it. She cringed and he felt it, curling strong arms around her once more. He carried the tiny, sobbing girl to her bed, and he sat down on it. She wanted to check if he was burning the sheets, and as soon as that thought filtered through her brain, she grabbed and held onto it for dear life. Dawson thought he'd burn the sheets. It was funny. It was light. It wasn't a terrifying or painful thought. It was just sheets, and burning, and Dawson. She had to hold on to that one thought, just that one thought, and she could stop crying.

Thaw laid down on the bed, on his side. Maebe felt the soft, warm sheets underneath her, and smelled no smoke.

He curled around her, almost completely engulfing her in his body, and she felt like she was locked in a cave of protection. The darkness she was trapped in didn't matter, when she was further trapped in a cage built for two. He protected her, and she held on to that thought, too. He would always protect her. Even if the people she loved never spoke to her again, Thaw could never leave her. He would be there until the day she died, working his a** off to keep her going. He would never leave her. He would never betray her. She would always have someone on her side.

"I love you." Maebe mumbled out into the hard rocky surface she was faceplanted against, and felt the purring rumble of content vibrate within his body. Thaw reached down and brushed her hair away from her wet face, before he settled into his position as the rock within which she would sleep in safety.

"I know, child." He rumbled. "And I love you, as well. Now sleep. Sleep in my arms."  

[Nio Love]

The Bad

"It's not your fault. It's a terrible joke!" Maebe had her arms folded tightly while Thaw read her twitter DMs from Dawson out loud, and her face was twisted tightly to keep from laughing. "And you should tell him that! Tell him he has awful jokes and he's an awful person for it!"

Thaw flickered his orange eyes up at her for a moment, before turning back down to the phone to type with slow and careful taps of his claws. He did not, in fact, tell Dawson he was an awful person.

"He claims the reason you do not find this amusing is because you do not like dumb jokes."

"See?" She shrieked, her smile finally breaking. "Even he says the joke's dumb! Told you. Dumb dumb dumb. Tell him he needs better material." She slowly laid back down on her bed, lounging in a manner that Thaw could tell meant she was thriving on Dawson's attention. Another message popped up, and he read this one aloud.

"Dawson asks: Anyone visited or talked to you all?" He couldn't bring himself to say the word 'yall', no matter how much he wanted to help.

"Not yet, Thank God." She huffed out, clearly annoyed at the mere idea. "I don't want visitors except you. Er. Him. You know what I mean. God, just tell him I said no." Thaw would have complied, if he hadn't already sent out Maebe's reaction verbatim, along with his own agreeing opinion. He looked up at her again, his molten face as flat and emotionless as ever, before turning back down to the phone. It was clear by the way he became engrossed in typing out long strings of conversation, that Thaw was no longer sharing the tweets with her. Maebe let it go for a minute or two, but her impatience got the best of her, and she started to eye him suspiciously.

"The ******** are you guys talking about?" She huffed out, her body tensing with a sudden worry. Thaw could read her body language, and typed out a quick, desperate request for another bad joke. He was instantly rewarded.

"I was filtering out the jokes to find a good one. Dawson states, How many lives does a nazi cat have? Nien." He didn't understand the joke, nor did he even think it was funny - which made him cringe when he realized he'd just said he was filtering bad ones out. He waited in the silence for her to call him out on his lie, because he was a terrible liar and she knew that, but.

"Haha. That little s**t." She giggled, pulling her pillow over her head when her face finally broke out into a grin. Thaw breathed in relief, and let Dawson know that this one had worked. Another joke came quickly, and Thaw siezed the opportunity.

"Maebe." He rumbled out. "Knock knock."

The pillow was pulled off of her head, and she cracked up with laughter. "God bless this a*****e, he's got you making knock knock jokes. Okay, I'll bite. Who's there?"

"Daisy."

Maebe's expression soured. "Daisy who?"

"Daisy me rolling, they hating." It was Thaw's deadpan, perfectly spoken without any slang, that made Maebe explode with sudden laughter. She was lost, and Thaw took advantage, speaking directly to Dawson for several minutes while she attempted to compose herself. For all he had done for the woman, Dawson deserved answers. Thaw felt compelled to give them to him.

He asked whether she still loved Otto and Cami. Thaw wished he could have lied and said she did not. Dawson would not understand the difference between loves that Maebe's heart had begun to compartmentalize. He would not understand that she had begun to consider love the equivalent of trust. And he would not understand that simply saying 'Yes' would grossly undervalue how she felt about those she actively hoped to pursue a relationship with. Namely, just him.

He would understand none of it, so Thaw did his best to be honest, without detail. He had never understood the workings of the human heart, himself. To try and explain the difference between the way she loved Otto and Cami, to the way she loved him, or Thaw, would be impossible for him.

So he didn't.

Quote:

She does. Just as much as she loves you and I. It is a very small group.

As if Maebe felt his sadness in the air, she'd sobered up and started to crawl up into his lap. She sat there, and Thaw felt the urge to hide the phone from her. He quickly stifled it for how ridiculous it was.

"What's he saying now?" She'd tilted her head up at him, and smiled in a way no one but him would ever be able to appreciate. The innocence, the trust in that smile. He pressed a hand to her cheek.

"What did Snow White say when she came out of the photo booth?" Thaw repeated another one of Dawson's jokes. "Some day, my prints will come."

Maebe fell into silence as she thought about it. Her mind wasn't putting together the word 'prints' as anything but 'prince'. "I don't get it." She muttered. "The ******** am I missing?"

Thaw paused to get Dawson's explanation, and then repeated it for her. "This is a Disney film. She sings a song about a prince-" Maebe reached up as far as she could go, and smacked Thaw in the face. "You tell him this, you tell him this exactly. Tell him I said Oh my God I get that part, you dork. I don't get the punch line. I wish I could punch him right now. That'll show him a punch line."

He heard it in her voice. He heard the soft lilt, the tender sweetness reserved for when she was speaking of someone that made her heart warm, and made her squirm. She only insulted the people she loved most.

He smiled, and tapped away on the phone.

"What do you call a belt made of watches?" Dawson had shared another joke. She rested her head back on Thaw, cuddled affectionately, and shrugged. He continued, "A waist of time."

"I got that one. These are so bad. Where are you pulling this s**t out from and also, also, why are you wasting so much time talking to me? This is supposed to be your free time away from my bullshit and you're the only one who's actually talking to me. You tell him that." She breathed, having fallen into a rant that she suddenly regretted. Dawson was spending too much of his time on her, but if he stopped because she pointed it out..

If he stopped..

"He says he has the time, and the jokes are amazing. He has a massive book of funnies."

"He's got a massive something all right." She sneered out, the joke falling from her lips before she'd even thought about it. She snickered, even as she heard Thaw typing. She waited for the pause, before Thaw finally let out a sigh.

"You've made me speak to the boil about his p***s." He growled out in annoyance. She grinned up at him again, in that way that made his heart melt.

"I know. Thaw and Dawson, sitting in a tree. D - I - C - K JOKE MAKING." She sounded so damn proud.  

[Nio Love]

The Ugly

The jokes were long gone.

Maebe had fallen into a lull of comfort in Thaw's arms, even as he chatted away with Dawson. Perhaps she should have known not to leave the honest, naive balrog with a man who had done nothing to make him suspicious. She was the only one of the three who would ever have thought, for one second, that giving two honest men room to talk would lead to secrets revealed that weren't theirs to tell.

But she trusted Thaw. She trusted Dawson. She fell asleep curled in the arms of her weapon, warm and happy. And she left him to do something he - and she - would regret for the rest of their lives.

Even in her half-asleep daze, she could tell Thaw had closed the phone. She tilted her head up, and mumbled out sleepily. "No more Dawson?"

The golem that held her felt stiffer than usual. Colder. Tenser. "I completed my discussion with him." Thaw admitted, hesitantly.

"Tell him I said later loser. Bring me some snacks when you're off duty." She paused, and lifted her head up off of the hard, rocky pillow she'd been laying on. "No healthy s**t."

"He promises you burgers and onion rings."

Maebe whooped out as excited a yell as she could muster, in her sleepy state. "HELL YES! Gonna eat good toniiight, oh yeah, ******** you health food, ******** yoooou."

The phone was closed again, and Thaw shifted her in his arms, until she was sitting against his giant legs and facing him. He realized belatedly it was trivial to put her this way; she couldn't see him. Instantly, he gathered her back up in his arms.

She just sat there for a second, before finally compelled to ask.

"Uh... what the ******** was that about?"

He opened his mouth, and closed it again. Twice, this happened, before he finally growled out. "I have done something wrong. I need to speak to you about it."

The guilt in his voice was just as heavy as the moment he realized he hadn't been able to fully heal her sight, and it made her gasp with a familiar sense of dread. But that was silly, she told herself. Thaw couldn't break up with her. He couldn't have done anything like that, and whatever it was he had done, had to have been in the last-

She didn't answer him. She waited for him to tell her what he'd done. And he did, as quickly, and functionally as possible.

"I shared too much about your childhood with Dawson. Nothing specific. But it was enough that I knew you would be angry with me. I regretted it immediately, but I wanted to be the one to tell you because it is my mistake. I am so deeply, truly sorry, Maebe."

Just saying the word childhood had been the true mistake. Maebe stilled, and refused to respond to Thaw's repeated apologies. He held her, and stroked her, and tried to make her say something. He would have preferred her rage to this sudden, cold silence. But she did not give him her rage, or her emotions at all. He would have to wait until he'd returned to her mind to truly appeal to any part of her that would listen.

He knew his time was coming. The golem would disintegrate if he didn't return to the labs quickly, but he kept holding her, and gently shaking her, and begging her to say something. Anything. He kissed her forehead and cried against her hair, but she had nothing left to say to him, anymore.

Thaw would always be there. Thaw would always protect her. Thaw would never betray her.

That was what she thought.

When his time had at last run out, he peeled himself away from her, and gave her one last, trembling hug. "Maebe, I love you. I have made a mistake, but I love you. Please speak to me soon. I promise, everything will be better again."

She did not believe his promise. He laid her down and she fell limp against the bed, where she remained even as he walked out of the room and ran for the labs. That was exactly where she would stay, until some force of nature moved her. Because she was done.

Maebe was done with believing in anything anymore.